Smartphone apps offer different ways to engage with climate change. TooGoodToGo (TGTG), which allows restaurants and cafes to advertise 11th hour food, promises to make the food sector more sustainable. They seem to be successful: since 2016, they have saved 200 million meals from going to waste. But what about the users?
In a collaboration between iDODDLE and Loughborough University, the Food Apptivism Project carried out a behaviour change intervention study with 10 households in Oxford. Emergent findings suggest that peoples’ routines – and how they link into food providers on the app – drive usage of the app more than the app interface (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Extracts concerning routine
Usage of the app is also linked to food waste spillover behaviours. It seems that being part of the intervention spurs households to reflect on other ways they can engage with food waste (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Extracts concerning the intervention effects